The story so far...

Let’s talk….

It’s easy for casual readers to think “wow, your doing “all the things”, you must be better, right”.

A persons health is complicated. It’s a intricate web of checks and balances. “Healthy” people pay little attention to it, and only get their health seen to if they feel bad. Chronically ill people are constantly managing, usually several complex conditions simultaneously to ensure they stay on their feet.

For the most part, I don’t post about specific health episodes. To be quite honest – I’m not sure what it would achieve other than allowing myself to wallow in the situation. And that is not something that I can ever do. Because if I get stuck down there, even for a minute, there is that lingering chance I will never find my way back out. I am sick, I’m not dead.

I have noticed more and more people reading this – why? I don’t know. I’d like to think it’s because of my fine wit and irrepressible sarcasm – but in reality I think people are looking for solace, which isn’t something I always deliver.

This photo represents one bad night for me… a random one, out of 10 straight. Medication litters my side of the room while I try and get a cluster of hormonal migraines under control so I can get on my feet and face 16 hours of work. This is from one night… and sure – there is a lot of stuff there that “I’m not suppose to take”, for good reason. But if I don’t take it, I don’t make myself get up in the morning, slap a smile on my face and cover up my beaten and bloodshot eyes, pretending I’m fine. If I don’t get up, I don’t have my jobs… if I don’t have my jobs, we don’t keep a roof over our head… This, is reality. This is my reality. I go through this cycle every nine weeks. 10 days of cluster migraines so bad that I throw up in my own hair while I’m asleep… then 3 days of my body rebelling against all the NSAI that I have to tip down my throat. 13 days out of 63.

I go back to the doctors, male, female, it doesn’t matter. And I beg them to end it. I beg them for a solution. Cut it out… Shove implants in me… I don’t care what you have to do, just make it stop. Every time – they tell me because I haven’t had children that there are no further steps they can take. That anything they do to me will severely impact my fertility. They say this to me like it’s my job to pump out kids, just because I was born with a uterus.

It is not my job, our job, populate this earth. It should be a decision, and a decision that’s respected, by everyone – including medical professionals. I go through 13 days of pain so vivid I can actually see it – and it’s completely unnecessary. There are several easy fixes that I can’t make them consider because I’m still of child bearing age. How is this at all fair? Why does everyone keep telling me “I’ll change my mind”. I have felt this way since I was 17. I don’t hear that clock ticking. I don’t feel the biological urge. I am not incomplete. I am perfectly fine without becoming a parent. We’re not talking about my illness or the lengths I’d have to go to. If it was something I wanted, I’d fight for it. It’s not… it’s something I absolutely don’t want. I don’t want to be someones mother. I don’t want to be responsible for another person… When did that become not ok in the eyes of society – and in the eyes of other parents?

I can’t even begin to talk about the judgement I’m subject to because I’m childless by choice. People reading this right now are judging me – like I’m making a comment on parenthood as a whole. Where? Where did I make that comment? Read it again. Go on. Where did I tell you that you shouldn’t have 5 kids with matching names? This, is about me. But I’m still amazed at other peoples power to make it about them. Even doctors and nurses and surgeons.

It’s my body – why am I not able to make a decision about my own body without everyone else giving me their two cents? If you’ve sat here, read this and judged me – then I’m sorry to tell you – you’re part of the problem.

Life has a single destination – and there are billions of different paths there. Just because mine is different to yours, that doesn’t make it wrong.

That is a lesson I try to apply to everything in my life. I always manage to get to where I need to be, just because my road looks different to yours – that doesn’t make it, or me wrong.